Small Magics

Dust jacket and full-color interior plates by Luisa J. Preißler

About the Book:

We're proud to present an irresistible, illustrated, compilation of five previously published stories by the bestselling author of the Kate Daniels series; including Kate Daniels’ very first meeting with Saiman, some related adventures, and two unforgettable ‘outside’ excursions and for the first time in print, the entire collected Curran POV pieces.

A Questionable Client

The earliest ‘intro’ to the Kate Daniels world, in which we meet the extremely ‘shifty’ Saiman for the very first time, when he hires Kate as his bodyguard to protect him from some very determined—and dangerous—Russian wizards. 

Retribution Clause

Saiman’s cousin, Adam, a Frost Giant—and also an insurance adjuster—and his enigmatic partner, Siroun, set out on an impossible mission to enforce a client’s Retribution Clause; that is, to kill the person who killed her. But is it possible that their target is innocent? Magic and mayhem (and a little personal chemistry) will reveal the truth!

Of Swine and Roses

A young adult story about a girl, a pig, some magic, and the worst date ever.

Chad Thurman is a thug who carries brass knuckles in both pockets and lays magic traps for intruders into “his” neighborhood. The last thing Alena Kornov wants to do is to go on the date with him. But when her family pressures her, she can’t say no.  Now the ice-cream is absent, the pig is running for its life. We won’t even mention the dead guy… 

Grace of Small Magics

Grace has always known she was different than everyone else, and that her family has magic abilities—and obligations.  After flying to meet the head of powerful Clan Dreoch in order to fulfill her families’ “duties” as servants, Grace finds herself in the middle of a mage clan war…

Magic Tests

In this short story set in the Kate Daniels world, Kate recruits her teenage ward, Julie, to search out a missing student whose location spell indicates she’s hidden somewhere on campus… and Julie discovers there are many lessons that have nothing to do with classwork!

Curran POV

Everybody has a point of view…especially Curran Lennart, Beast Lord of the Free People of Atlanta—and Kate Daniel’s mate.  Here’s what Curran was thinking while Kate was kicking butt and taking names from Magic Bites to Magic Bleeds.

Limited:1000 signed numbered hardcover copies, bound in leather

Lettered:52 signed traycased copies, bound in a different leather than the numbered

Curran POV

(exerpt)

It was moving day. Kate, Julie and me were taking boxes out of the back of a rented truck and carrying them into our new place. Kate had labeled them. “Kitchen, living room, master bedroom,” etc. It felt odd to have all these different spaces after living in two rooms for so long. The plan was to get all the boxes in before we started unpacking them.

Once we announced that we were stepping down, we had ninety days to separate from the Pack. We were lucky to find a big three-story house located in a subdivision within riding distance to Cutting Edge and Julie’s school. It even had a place in the back for Kate and the kid to ride horses. Which I honestly couldn’t care less about, but it made the girls happy.

It’s not that I don’t like horses. Okay, I really don’t like them. I just don’t see the point. They’re big but terribly fragile. Feed one too much food or the wrong food, and they die, just like that. If they step into a pothole and break a leg, you have to put them down. What other animal do you have to do that for? When I was a kid we had a cat with three legs and half a tail. His name was Casper and he got around just fine. When I was a kid…

Yeah, I didn’t think a lot about my childhood probably for a good reason. I couldn’t really complain though. It had been great before…it became a lot less so. Better not to think about it.

Kate and Julie were struggling to team-lift a big box of books, so I came over, picked it up, and carried it in one hand like a waiter would with a plate or tray of food.

“Where would you like this, ma’am?”

“Show-off,” Kate said. “It says ‘Library’ on it.”

“Oh? I thought that was perhaps the work of some deranged graffiti artist.”

“Aha. I asked you if you wanted to label them and you passed.”

“I was busy, actually packing. I think I did pretty well for my first time.”

“Wait, you never moved before?” Julie asked.

“No, not really. When Mahon found me, I didn’t really have a lot. All my crap fit into a backpack. I tried to take only what I needed to survive. If you steal too much, people start to notice. I never stayed in one place too long and needed to be able to move quick and quiet.”

“Holy crap,” she said. “You were a juvenile delinquent.”

Kate shot her a warning look. Julie ignored it.   

“That’s so cool.”

I never thought of it as cool before. Lonely, starving and scared, yes. Cool, not so much.

“Julie,” Kate started, “I don’t think he wants to talk about it.”

“No, it’s okay. It wasn’t exactly like that. I was twelve and after my parents…after they were gone, I lived alone in the woods for several months. I hunted when I could and tried to stay out of the rain but springs in the Smokies are inconsistent. That’s when you get the heaviest snows. One day it’s nice and the next there’s a blizzard. When I was cold, wet, and hungry enough, I would sneak into unoccupied cabins. Some were really nice.”

“You never got caught?”

“Just the once. I was careful and made sure the owners were away. Lots of people, especially before the Shift, had vacation homes in the mountains. Usually Florida people who came up in the summer to get away from the heat and in the fall to watch the leaves turn. Most didn’t stay for winter. Some came up only for the holidays in winter but it’s not as pretty. Just cold, wet and grey.”

“How did you know which ones would have food and stuff?”

“The vacation homes were always bigger and nicer than the houses of people that lived there year round. It’s a poor area. Some locals live in little more than rundown shacks. They usually have a lot of guns though. I avoided those.”

“That’s f…messed up.”

“Language,” Kate warned.

“I didn’t say it,” Julie said. “But if I had, it would be true.”

“She’s right.” I added helpfully, “It is pretty fucked up. That area suffers from what we would call an ‘income disparity’ between the tourists and the locals. They had plenty and it didn’t really bother me to take what I needed.”

“Damn straight,” Julie said.

“Language,” Kate warned again.

“What?” she said, “I can say damn, it’s in the Bible.”

“She’s got you there.”

Kate squinted at us. “How about the two of you stop standing around and actually carry some of this shi…stuff into the house.”

“Ha!” Julie said. “You said shit and you owe me a dollar.”

Kate, in an effort to curb Julie’s cursing, had adopted a system in which the curser owed a buck for each offense. I didn’t know what the tally was but I was guessing they were about even.

“I didn’t say the whole word,” Kate said. “So I owe you fifty cents.”

“Seventy-five!”

“Fine.”

“I’m hungry, what’s for lunch?” Julie asked.

Kate glanced at her. “You just ate before we left. It’s barely been a couple of hours.”

“Yeah, but we’ve been working hard, and I’m hungry.”

“Me too,” I said. “Will you make us something?”

Kate leaned against the stack of boxes. “If you find the kitchen stuff and unpack it. I can’t cook if I don’t have pans.”

“You drive a hard bargain, dread mistress. We accept your offer. Come on, Julie, the sooner we do it, the sooner we eat.”

Later, after we had carried all the boxes with Kitchen marked on them into the actual kitchen, and I brought in the table and the chairs, Kate made us some iced tea and then went to off to unpack bathroom essentials. Julie and I started on the boxes. The sooner we put all the pots and pans into the cabinets, the sooner I would get a meal.

It felt strange but good to be settling into the new house. This was our home now, Kate’s, Julie’s and mine. It had seemed abstract or theoretical before. The house we considered, the house looked at, the house we bought. Now putting our stuff up made it more real.

Julie asked, “So how did you get caught?”

“What? Why do you want to know?”

“I dunno, everybody knows about how you became the Beast Lord, but nobody talks about what you were before. How come?”

“’Cause it’s not a pretty story. I didn’t pull a sword from a stone. A giant man didn’t come on my birthday to tell me that I was a wizard.” Well, Mahon had seemed like a giant to me then.

Julie’s eyes got really big. “Tell me.”

“It’s full of gore and bad things happening,” I said.

“I’ve been through some rough shit.”

“I heard that!” Kate yelled from the bathroom.

“I can handle it.”

I gave her my flat stare. The one meant to convey that I was done discussing something.

“I told you before that didn’t work on me. I know you won’t hurt me, so stop pretending.”

“I know you have been through a lot, and I’m sorry about that. What happened to you wasn’t fair, but sometimes the past is best left, well, in the past.”

“That’s deep,” Julie said. “You read that in a fortune cookie?”

She was getting as bad as Kate with mouthing off when she felt uncomfortable, but unlike Kate, she would correct herself if I waited. Three, two…

“Sorry,” she said. “I don’t like the stare. I understand. I don’t like talking about my mom and,” she paused and made a hand gesture, “all that stuff.”

Because it still hurt. “It will hurt less with time.”

“You’re old,” she said. “If it still hurts too much to talk about it after all that time, then it will probably never stop hurting for me.”

Ouch, she had me there.

Julie knew I told this story to only one person—Kate—and now that we were a family, she wanted to know that she was trusted. We were a family. Family knew things outsiders didn’t.

“Alright. But it’s a long story.”

“I won’t interrupt,” she said. “And I promise I won’t tell anyone.”

And so I told her, all of it, the whole ugly story.